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Foxboro User Group
July 20, 2007
Last Sunday I went to Boston to attend the Foxboro User Group. This year Invensys has split up its various divisions rather than having a big Invensys-wide (except Wonderware) gathering as it did last December in Dallas. As a result, the meeting was much smaller and somewhat lower key, particularly since the last one was just seven months ago.
Given that relatively short time, there wasn't much in the way of new products. Most of the things they were talking up related to new migration paths to Foxboro I/A and other more specific I/A improvements. One particularly interesting point is a new partnering with NextNine and its virtual support engineer to provide on-demand technical assistance and monitoring of working I/A platforms. Details on these will filter out through the normal channels.
Peter Martin gave the most interesting keynote address on the importance of process and automation engineers learning to speak "accounting" so they can communicate with those folks up on the enterprise level. Otherwise the bean counters do not understand the value of engineering functions, just expenses. (Watch for a coming podcast on this and a Control Engineering daily news story.) As an aside, I learned that he is not just Dr. Peter Martin, but Rev. Dr. Peter Martin. A true renaissance man, but I don't think he makes shoes.
Invensys is one of those companies that does not feel it has to do everything by itself, or give that impression. It seems to be generally straightforward about who it partners with (SAP, Apprion, NextNine, etc.) both for software and hardware products. There's an honesty to that, and if the partners are well recognized and well liked companies, it can give both a boost. The downside is that it may suggest that the company has no innovations of its own. The challenge for Foxboro, and other companies like it, is convincing users at these events that it really does have some new ideas. There's nobody to partner with for those.
Posted by Peter Welander on July 20, 2007 | Comments (0)